:Discordianism: /dis-kor'di-*n-ism/ n. The veneration of
{Eris}, a.k.a. Discordia; widely popular among hackers.
Discordianism was popularized by Robert Shea and Robert Anton
Wilson's novel "{Illuminatus!}" as a sort of
self-subverting Dada-Zen for Westerners --- it should on no account
be taken seriously but is far more serious than most jokes.
Consider, for example, the Fifth Commandment of the Pentabarf, from
"Principia Discordia": "A Discordian is Prohibited of
Believing What he Reads." Discordianism is usually connected with
an elaborate conspiracy theory/joke involving millennia-long
warfare between the anarcho-surrealist partisans of Eris and a
malevolent, authoritarian secret society called the Illuminati.
See {Religion} under {Appendix B}, {Church of the
SubGenius}, and {ha ha only serious}.
-- The AI Hackers Dictionary
Illuminatus!:
I. "The Eye in the Pyramid"
II. The Golden Apple"
III. "Leviathan".
Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson
Dell, 1988
ISBN 0-440-53981-1
This work of alleged fiction is an incredible berserko-surrealist
rollercoaster of world-girdling conspiracies, intelligent dolphins, the
fall of Atlantis, who really killed JFK, sex, drugs, rock'n'roll, and
the Cosmic Giggle Factor....
etwork, the: n. 1. The union of all the major noncommercial
academic, and hacker-oriented networks, such as Internet, the old
ARPANET, NSFnet, {BITNET}, and the virtual UUCP and {USENET}
`networks', plus the corporate in-house networks and commercial
time-sharing services (such as CompuServe) that gateway to them....
